The Art of Primitive Tool Making Cordage

The Art of Primitive Tool Making

Cordage

There may come a time in your life where you are in a situation in which you are out in a hostile environment with nothing.  Survival might seem like an impossible task. In other articles we have addressed finding shelter, making fire, and finding and purifying water. Now we will cover the topic of making tools. With tools your survival will be made much more enjoyable and what at first might have seemed a daunting task will become an enjoyable camp out.  Most people will never understand how the simple things they use every day were once made on the spot by the people that used them. In the old days one only went to town for things you could not make yourself. Simply you just need to know how.

Let’s start with cordage. If you know how to make your own cord you can make traps, bags, rope, hammocks and fishing line. You can do so much with cord. It is just a very amazing item to have and be able to make. So let’s start with what we make cordage from. We will either make cordage from plant fiber or from animal fibers. There are a few good spots to get cord off of animals like the spine and the leg tendons. For plants you want dry fibers. Look for your weed like plants they will have good fibers. Here is a small list of plants good for fibers: milkweed, hemp, cattail, cedar, maple & douglas iris just to name a few. These each have different ways you have to extract and prepare the fibers in later articles we will go into more detail about how to do this. 

There are a few different ways to make your cordage. For this article we are just going to go with the simple reverse wrap method. What you want to do is take your fiber then fold it in half leaving one side longer than the other. Next pinch it together and twist the top strand away from you then you want to bring that piece toward you and down. Now hold that section as you twist the new top piece away from you. And that’s all there is to it. Wash, rinse, and repeat. To reiterate, the top piece twists away from you. Once it is tight you bring the top piece toward you and down. That brings the bottom piece up then twist the new top piece away from you until it tightens then bring that toward you and down. Now that we have the process for making the cord let’s talk about adding more fibers to make the cord longer. Once you have progressed to where you have about 2 inches of top fiber left you want to get a new fiber and place it with the 2 inch section then twist that away from you then pull the twisted piece toward you and down. You have just integrated a new piece of fiber. Very simple right?That’s what I thought until I tried it the first time. It takes a little getting used to but once you get the hang of it you’ll be knocking out a lot of fiber really quickly. 

As always thanks you for your time and attention. I hope the information in this article was helpful. If you have any questions or there is a specific area of survival you would like us to cover please feel free to contact us and we will look into it.  Don’t forget to subscribe and follow us on facebook.

Research for this article pulled from our friends at Black ScoutSurvival, Primitive ways and the book Extreme Survival